REMEMBER

1. Experiences are worth so much more than comfort. Never skip out because something sounds risky or like it’s too much work. You will not feel nostalgia for a night spent on Twitter.

2. It doesn’t matter how many likes you get on Instagram. Social media anxiety is exhausting, and no one needs another thing to stress over. If you like what you post, if it’s a memory you will look back on and enjoy, nothing else matters. Also, always reply to your grandparents’ comments.

3. Everyone and everything is so beautiful, including you. You are beautiful every way you are. Build up the light you feel inside you on your best days until the glow escapes through your pores. If you keep your back straight, your head high, and your smile wide, you are unstoppable.

4. Some people will try to tell you you are beautiful before they remind you of your bravery, your intelligence, or your awesomeness. You are all of these things in equal measures, but you do not need someone to tell you that to know it is true.

5. Enjoy everything unabashedly. Love fanfiction, love chick flicks, love popular music. Never ever have a “guilty pleasure”, because you should never feel guilty for loving something. Find someone who loves what you love and have hours long conversations about your shared adorations. These will be some of the most lovely and fulfilling experiences you have. Don’t worry about seeming cool. As Lester Bangs said,”the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone when you’re uncool,”.

6. Write write write write write. Write about the banalities of your day, write whimsies that float in your head into being, transfer raw emotions onto paper. Writing is simultaneously one of the most frustrating/rewarding processes ever, and nothing beats the high you feel when you know you’ve captured something real.

7. Sometimes people will hurt you without realizing they have, and sometimes they will know exactly what they are doing. This really sucks.

8. It’s important to always say what you feel even if you could hurt yourself. The only way to discover who you truly are is by letting your emotions guide you- not their social repercussions.

9. The feeling of finding new music and immediately loving it is pure, undiluted happiness. Embrace this excitement by pretending you’re in a music video, or by dancing in your bed late at night. This never gets old.

10. Everyone should be a feminist. Honestly, everyone.

11. Things in life will be so awful and confusing that your stomach will twist and you will cry for the injustice of it all. You will be incredibly angry and righteous, but you will feel incredibly small when your realize your lack of power in the grand scheme of things. You may see these atrocities in the news or right next to you, and you may never understand why they happened, but you can never forget that they did. To Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Leelah Acorn, and everyone else who is a victim of ignorance, I am so sorry. The world we live in is very broken, and all we can do is try to fix it.

12. Never conform just because it’s easier. Wear whatever you want, listen to whatever music you want, live however you want to. You are you, no one else is quite the same. Embrace your you-ness.

13. If you are upset, cry. Cleanse yourself of all the ugliness you feel inside, and use tears to erase your mistakes until you are a blank slate ready to start again. When you are done crying, sleep. Find refuge in those hours of nothingness, and when you wake up, you will be new. Go conquer something, you magical person.

14. Apologies are some of the most powerful words that can be spoken. Through remorse, we better ourselves. Through ourselves, we better the world. Always apologize.

— 14 Things I Learned in 2014 moonriseprovince